‘There is a moral decay in the body of America: antisemitism is just the beginning’

DAN COLEMAN analyses the extremism infiltrating the Republican Party and suggests the fight to preserve pluralistic democracy may be the Jewish cause for our time.

“How many people in the last few years have been at a dining room conversation where the topic has turned to where might we move?” This was the question posed recently by Rabbi Daniel Zemel to the congregation at Temple Micah in Washington, DC.

As reported by congregant and Washington Post columnist Dana Millbank, Rabbi Zemel “was talking about the unthinkable: that Jews might need to flee the United States.” On the eve of the US mid-term elections, that’s one expression of how frightening the political situation in the United States has become for American Jews.

Rabbi Zemel is hardly alone. Wondering where Jews might move “is among the most frequently asked questions that I get,” Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, told Millbank.

Bringing this concern from the pulpit to the political arena, last month the Jewish Democratic Council of America launched a $US250,000 ad campaign in key states warning that “history may repeat itself unless we act”.

The organisation’s CEO, Halie Soifer, explained that “white supremacy and extremism have been normalised within the Republican Party and pose a grave threat to Jewish Americans and other minorities … nothing less than the future of our democracy and security are on the ballot in this [mid-term] election.”

In Pittsburgh on Saturday, former president Barack Obama weighed in, calling out politicians and celebrities who are “reposting vile, antisemitic conspiracy theories.”